The Image of Inadequacy
by Itirpon
Summary: Poppy looks a hero in the eye, and finds a challenge as tall as herself.


The Image of Inadequacy.

* * *

Disbelieving her eyes, an excitement suffused a world-weary yordle. Tightening her grasp upon its handle, the pigtailed citizen of Bandle hefted the great war hammer that to all others' eyes was as much part of her identity as her hairstyle or anything else about her and approached the subject of her sight. Both hammer and hair bobbed with her every stride, neither holding her back despite together accounting for much of her silhouette. She stopped suddenly as though blocked by a wall and breathlessly looked all around this person; this hero, perhaps. This end to her tiresome quest, perhaps. Their eyes met, and after the mutual gaze grew uncomfortable, Poppy spoke.

"You… Is it really you?" The candidate made a funny face at her. Poppy chided herself in her mind, for she had rehearsed this countless times before, even before a mirror sometimes, to make sure that she got it right. "Listen, I'm looking for somebody. Somebody who's the right kind of hero to help me deal with a problem I've got."

The candidate demurred. "I think you've got the wrong person. I'm no hero."

Poppy smirked—that was her line, wasn't it?—and turned it around. "Neither am I. I'm just a yordle with a hammer, I tell them all. But after a while, I figured out something: they all can't be all wrong. How about we trade some stories? I'm getting used to having what people think is a little bit of hero of my own in me, but I need to find a real hero, through and through. You might not think it's you, but like those people calling me a hero, it's something you can't tell by looking at yourself. "

The candidate's gaze lowered to the hammer. "That's quite a thing. It looks too big for you. It looks too big for me."

"You're telling me? I've been lugging this thing around for years! And it is too big, and too heavy, but… for the hero I've gotta get it to, it'll be just right." Poppy hesitated. She could feel the candidate's retort before it would be voiced.

"It's been close enough to being just right for you, hasn't it?"

"It's been all wrong! My birthright has me in the forges and the metal works. That's who I am, what I'm supposed to be up to. But part of that job is getting the pieces to the people they go to. And I've done such a crud job of that, I'm not even sure anymore if I'm fit for it. And the only reason I can do any good with this thing is after carrying it around every day, every day it feels a feather lighter. But I'm sure it'd feel no heavier to you, if you're really the one it's for."

The candidate peered into her expression, and Poppy did the same in kind. "You really want to give that hammer to the right hero, don't you?"

Poppy rested the hammer on one face of its head such that its handle, still in her grasp, projected like a railing on front of her. She cast her gaze just over the handle but as far as a thousand yards. "If it's for you, then I do want you to have it. But really, I hope it's for somebody else. I can tell you don't want it, from what you're saying."

"Let's talk it out like you wanted to."

For some time, Poppy and the candidate spoke together, recalling countless deeds, daring and docile, monumental and mundane. Both chuckled at the time the hammer's role in saving a life was by being something for Poppy to stand on, compensating for her stature. The things of which were spoken, indeed, described a hero, and one worthy of the hammer. But too many of those deeds were her own doing. She wasn't a hero, but this hammer was somehow trying to make one of her.

"Why don't you take it, just for a moment. See if it feels right in your hands. Well, go ahead." The candidate gripped its handle the same as did she, but would not draw it away from her. "Please. This has gone on too long. I want to go home. I want to go back to my life, like it used to be. I want it all to be right, again, like it's supposed to be. Please! Why won't you take it? Why won't you accept it?" Poppy's eyes grew fierce. "Accept it! Just grip the handle like this," so she did, "swing it back like this," so she did, "and use it to hit the thing that scares you!" So, she did.

The image of a hero with a hammer, and hair up in two puffy pigtails, vanished as the full length mirror before her became as obliterated as a thousand vile foes before. But unlike those, this one would be lurking again, in another looking glass, wherever she might go.

"I'm not a hero," she whimpered, confessing to a fragment of her face now looking up at her from a shard on the floor as she slumped over the hammer's handle, her weight balanced as perfectly by its head as when she carried the weapon into battle. "A real hero would've saved his life and not the helmet."


End file.
